Post-combustion power plants are the major sources of CO2 emissions. Given that fossil fuels will be the major sources of energy in the next few years, capture of CO2 from these sources for sequestration could be a possible short term solution for abating greenhouse gas emissions. Pressure/Vacuum swing adsorption (P/VSA) processes using solid sorbents are considered as viable options.
The presentation will have two parts. In the first, we report the systematic procedure for the synthesis of a P/VSA processes for dry CO2/N2 separation using zeolite 13X as adsorbent. Using equilibrium and kinetic parameters obtained in the laboratory, we screen several processes for adsorptive post-combustion capture. Based on multi-objective we identify the process that provides the best productivity-energy consumption trade-off. This process is then scaled for pilot-plant demonstration. These represent the first reports in the open-literature of an adsorptive process that achieves the purity and recovery targets set by the US Department of Energy in a single-stage process.
The second part of the work deals with the issue of CO2 capture from wet flue gas. We report our recent results of developing a two-sorbent process for this purpose. We show that it is possible to capture CO2 from wet flue gas and discuss the additional energy that is required to achieve this.
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The Microbial Network group at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg focuses on quantitative analysis of cellular networks and their dynamics in microorganisms. The group is particularly interested in elucidating mechanisms that enable cellular networks to sensitively detect and integrate multiple extra- and intracellular cues, to robustly function in noisy and perturbing environments, and to plastically adjust their function dependent on the environment. Ultimately, the researchers would like to understand how the structure and function of the network have been shaped by the evolutionary selection. As model systems, the group uses chemotaxis, sugar uptake and two-component signaling in bacteria, as well as the mating behavior in budding yeast.
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Ligand-responsive gene switches are cellular sensors that process specific signals into adjusted gene product responses and transform mammalian cells into useful cell-based machines for next-generation biotechnological and biomedical applications. In this talk, I will present how mammalian cells engineered with such gene switches can readily applied for biotechnological and diagnostic purposes. The construction of larger synthetic gene circuits, however, requires an additional gene control layer to connect multiple switches. RNA-based gene switches are perfectly suited for this function because they act on translation rather than transcription. In this talk, I will present how to build such RNA-based gene switches and implement them into large gene circuits with network topologies reminiscent to electronics that provide engineered cells the ability to perform complex information-processing tasks.
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A key requirement in developing systematic tools to explore and predict properties of materials not yet synthesized is the availability of accurate computational tools determining energies not only at T = 0 K but also under realistic conditions. Combining accurate first principles calculations with meso­scopic/ macroscopic thermodynamic and/or kinetic concepts allows now to address this issue and to determine free energies and derived thermodynamic quantities. In the talk it will be shown how novel sampling strategies in configuration space together with highly converged density-functional theory calculations allow an unbiased and accurate determination of all relevant temperature dependent free energy contributions. The flexibility and the predictive power of these approaches and the impact they can have in developing new strategies in materials design will be discussed for modern ultra-high strength steels, light weight metallic alloys such as Mg-based alloys as well as in understanding the origins of failure mechanisms such as hydrogen embrittlement.
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Multiphase flows including strong interface effects like surface tension have a wide range of applications.
How to represent the geometry (i.e. the free boundary) constitutes the main design decision for a solution strategy for this type of problems. We review certain strategies with an emphasis on so called mesh moving methods.
Several real world applications are presented that are solved effectively by this mesh moving method.
In the presentation the ingredients of the methods like ALE, node doubling and subspace projection method are discussed.
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The development of recombinant antibodies and vaccines has allowed us to treat and prevent a
large number of life-threatening diseases. However, as things stand in 2015, the speed, capacity
and scalability of current production systems is beginning to place limitations on this crucial
technology. The large-scale production of antibodies, vaccines and other pharmaceutical
recombinant proteins is restricted by the industry’s current reliance on fermenter technology,
particularly the culture of mammalian cells. This expensive and time-consuming production
platform is preventing the distribution of recombinant protein drugs to those most in need. One
way in which the above limitations can be addressed is through the use of plants and plant-based
expression systems for rapid recombinant pharmaceutical protein production.
The economic production of plant-based pharmaceuticals depends on satisfactory yields and
product quality. This presentation will discuss the latest development in antibody and vaccine
development and their production by molecular farming, focusing particularly on strategies to
maximize protein yields during upstream production and optimize protein recovery in the
downstream processing steps. Such strategies often involve careful consideration of how the
protein is expressed and targeted within the plant cell, a factor which affects yield, stability,
quality and ease of isolation. Our long-term objective is to ensure that next generation of plantbased
production systems for recombinant proteins will create the opportunity to deliver
antibodies, vaccines and other biopharmaceuticals beyond the industrialized nations and into the
developing world. Several case studies will be presented: HIV antibodies were chosen to
undergo fast-track development, including risk assessment, expression in tobacco, scale-up,
downstream processing and regulatory development, with the aim of performing clinical trials. In
addition use of engineered plant cells for human vaccine candidates will be discussed.
Pharma-Planta is an EU Sixth Framework Integrated Project whose primary goal is to develop an
approved production pipeline for plant-derived pharmaceutical proteins (PDPs). Although
previous research has provided proof of the PDP concept, Pharma-Planta aims to develop an
entire production chain by taking candidate pharmaceutical molecules from the expression
platform through all stages of production and processing, ultimately to initiate phase I human
trials in Europe. The Pharma-Planta Consortium comprised 40 interacting groups representing 33
public institutes and SMEs from 11 European Member States and South Africa.
At the beginning of the project, eight target molecules were chosen representing four key
indication areas including HIV. From these molecules, two HIV antibodies were chosen to
undergo fast-track development, which would include risk assessment, cloning, expression and
optimization of production in plants, scale-up, downstream processing and regulatory
development, with the aim of submitting at least one of them for clinical trials within the five
years of the program. Two HIV neutralizing antibodies have been expressed successfully in the
two main production crops being developed within the consortium – maize and tobacco. One of
these antibodies, 2G12, has been expressed at levels greater 100 mg per kg of plant material. The
plant-derived antibodies remain stable and functional and retain their neutralizing activity. The
consortium has investigated novel upscaling and downstream processing strategies to provide
multiple grams clinical grade antibody material for human clinical trials. Preclinical trials in
rabbits have been completed successfully and we also conducted successfully a phase I clinical
trial in the UK. This work will now be moved forward for a phase IIa clinical trial which is
funded by an Advanced ERC grant from the European Commission.
We have also developed an interesting multi-stage malaria vaccine and neutralizing rabies
antibody candidates and will discuss how both products have matured over the years both in
performance and in manufacturing with the aim in mind to bring these two products into
translational research within the next months.
Finally state of the art technology developments to accelerate the development and production of
PMPs as well as regulatory issues will be discussed. Along this line an innovative new
manufacturing concept using LED lighting in a vertical farm concept have been developed.
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Abstract:
To some people we may be entering the period of the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ - the Biological Industrial Revolution. Just as in previous industrial revolutions the potential previously promised by coal, mechanisation and electronics has now to be realised by the exploitation of biological potential. This new potential is made available by large scale gene synthesis and expression and understanding the options available for the scale-up and control of novel genetic entities. It seems that in order to start to understand fully how the exploitation of novel biological potential may be realised there needs to be a recognition of the scale and complexity of the task. Novel methodologies in numerical analysis and experimental design as well as in automation and bioprocess engineering need to be employed and coordinated in order to gain commercial traction on synthetic biology. This short talk will seek to identify how techniques of large scale experimental design, scale up and analyses, as well as a novel approach to biological automation are seeking to address just some of the issues surrounding Synthetic Biology and delivering on ‘From Gene to Product’.
Short biography of Mr. Craig JL Gershater:
Craig is a senior scientist and manager with over 40 years’ industrial bioprocess optimisation and biotechnology experience. He has held a variety of senior positions in the pharmaceutical industry, lastly as Head of Fermentation Sciences R&D at SmithKline Beecham prior to becoming the CEO and Principal Consultant with Cambridge Bioprocess Management Ltd in 2000. Among his many transnational clients in recent years he has worked with GSK, as well as a number of SMEs and in academia. He is an expert in the application of statistical methods to experimental design and rapid bioprocess optimisation. He has used these techniques in a wide variety of industrial research and development projects including full scale development of biotechnology projects to GMP/GLP requirements.
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The vertex cover problem is one of the most important and intensively studied combinatorial optimization problems. Khot and Regev (2003) proved that the problem is NP-hard to approximate within a factor 2-ε, assuming Khot's famous Unique Games Conjecture (UGC). This is tight because the problem has an easy 2-approximation algorithm.
We prove the following unconditional result about linear programming (LP) relaxations of the problem: every LP relaxation that approximates vertex cover within a factor 2-ε has super-polynomially many inequalities.
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Synthetic Biology is heralded as a novel approach to the engineering of biosystems that will set the scene for a flourishing knowledge-based bio-economy. Benefits for the fundamental understanding of biological phenomena are also claimed, as rational construction of a system based on hypothesized design principles can be used to test assumptions. The keywords of synthetic biology are rational design, decoupling of conception and fabrication, standardization and component re-use, modularity and hierarchy, orthogonality and context-insensitivity. However, each keyword raises questions of desirability and feasibility. These questions remain ongoing areas of inquiry for the field and require multi-faceted approaches. Beyond the current hype surrounding it, what is the value of synthetic biology for the progress in understanding of biological systems and for the establishment of new biotechnological production platforms?
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Many large scale nonlinear optimization problems are discretizations of
optimization problems in function space and thus, we expect that additional
functional analytic structure should be present. The goal of function space
oriented optimization is to exploit this structure. This may comprise the
efficient computation of steps by iterative solvers, problem suited
globalization strategies, or the use of adaptive mesh refinement inside
an optimization method.
In this talk we will give an overview of a couple of ideas, and explain at
concrete examples how they can be implemented.
Short CV
Anton Shiela is a professor for applied mathematics at the University of Bayreuth.
His fields of research are optimization with PDEs, in particular the
development of algorithms for the solution of optimization problems in
function space.
Before moving to Bayreuth in 2014, he was an associate professor
at Technische Universitaet Hamburg-Harburg (2013-2014) and
Matheon junior reseach group leader at TU Berlin (2012-2013).
He got his PhD in 2007 at Zuse Institute Berlin, where he worked
as a reasearch assistant (2002-2012).
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The large scale production of bulk chemicals is performed in the chemical process industry frequently applying continuously operated reaction and separation processes. In the fields of “Flow chemistry” and “Continuous Manufacturing” there are currently significant efforts to apply similar principles for the production of fine chemicals and pharmaceuticals, which is traditionally based on batch processes. The current status will be discussed and similarities and differences between the two fields will be highlighted.
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